


Draw me a map to home

by IraBragi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: "Your soulmate's frist words to you are written on your skin" AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Happy Ending, It takse time but they get together, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 13:25:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11578968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi
Summary: Most people assume that the first time they spoke to each other was at the first Falcons/Ace game after Zimmerman signed with the Falcons.  That is certainly the story that the media latched onto - the dramatics of the fight and a Romeo and Juliet-esque love between two opposing teams.  They are all wrong though.





	Draw me a map to home

    Most people assume that the first time they spoke to each other was at the first Falcons/Ace game after Zimmerman signed with the Falcons. That is certainly the story that the media latched onto - the dramatics of the fight (if you can even call it a fight, mostly Kent remembers being shaken like a rag doll and hoping his teeth wouldn’t all fall out) and a Romeo and Juliet-esque love between two opposing teams.  
    People ask them sometimes, it’s a normal question. Many couples show off their words proudly. The assumption it that their words must be about hockey. Or they joke, “It must be something awful! Did you two fall in love while swearing at each other during a game?”  
    They are all wrong though.  
    The first time Kent Parson laid eyes on Alexei Mashkov he was seventeen years old. It was three months before the NHL draft and his coaches had roped him, kicking and screaming, into an exhibition game against a Russian team whose name he had passive aggressively refused to learn to pronounce. He was mad because he wanted to be at home with his sister, because he could be practicing, because Zimms wasn’t there to play beside him… because he was terrified out of his mind what Jack would do if left alone.  
    Kent wasn’t stupid. He’d watched his mother’s hands shake too hard to hold a pen, he’d listened to her laughing excuses for why the wine wasn’t a problem, “just to calm my nerves” she’d say. He knew what it looked like when worry, and brilliance, and addiction collided. Maybe that was why he’d been drawn to Jack in the first place.  
    They say you always marry your mother - or something stupid like that.  
     He was seventeen and he was half a country away from the boy he was head-over-heels, so-big-his-heart-couldn’t-hold-it, udderly in love with. You could love someone and be terrified for them at the same time. You could love them and hate them for making you terrified too. Kent had a lot of practice doing both.  
He spent most of the game in the penalty box. (The coach had torn into him then finally threw up his hands and stomped away. Kent hoped that Jack was watching the game. He hoped that it made him smile and shake his head. “You really can’t stay out of trouble without me eh Parse? He’d say. “Nope” Kent would reply, “I guess we’re just going to have to keep playing together, huh?”)  
    They lost the game. He took as long as he could in the showers and then gathered his gear quietly with the intention of sneaking off and trying his luck finding a bar that wouldn’t card him. He came around the corner only to collide with someone big. His bag went one direction and his ass hit the floor.  
    “So sorry! Not see you!” A huge hand griped his bicep and as suddenly as he had hit the floor he was hauled up off it. He looked up (and up, and up) and saw a lanky boy with dark brown hair and a ridiculous gold chain around his neck - and a very concerned look on his face.  
    “Oh, it’s you.” Was what came out of Kent’s mouth (and then he wanted to bite his tongue off because, what a seriously stupid thing to say.)  
     “Oh.” The other boy suddenly looked - something - happy or relieved or excited maybe, and he broke into a huge grin. “This good! We find word-mates.” Then there was a bit in what he assumed was Russian then, “Talk to coach now?”  
    And it all crashed down on Kent in the space between one heartbeat and the next. This boy was his soulmate. This boy who wasn’t Jack. This boy who apparently wanted to what - come out? Declare their undying love for each other after knowing each other for ten minutes? He and Jack had always known they weren’t soulmates. It’s part of why they worked. When they started it had felt safer. Now, with panic clawing at his throat and his heart threatening to beat out of his chest, it didn’t feel safe at all. Alexi looked at him and he looked so hopeful - this boy who wasn’t Jack - and Kent couldn’t do it. Not to Jack, not to himself.  
    “I can’t. I, I, there is someone else… I love them.” He turned then and ran. He could hear shouting behind him but he can’t make out the words over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

    The next day his coach yelled at him for forgetting his bag at the rink. Three months later he’s sitting in a hospital waiting room and Mrs. Zimmerman is explaining as gently as she can that Jack doesn't want to see him. When he cries she holds him close and tells him it’s not his fault. He wishes he could believe her.

    Alexei Mashkov is eighteen when he stands in a empty hallway watching his soulmate run away from him. His English isn’t that great but he can understand “someone else, love them” perfectly well. He doesn't quite know what he shouts at the other boy: That he had looked at his mark every day since he was a child and hoped that it would be a boy who said those words to him? That even though people back home say it’s wrong he knew he would love his soulmate with everything in him? That he would love him more than hockey even. That it’s alright because he is going to work so hard that he will be drafted for the America NHL and come play and take care of them both. That he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of the little angry player with the golden hair the whole game. That the way he moves the puck is beautiful, that he had hoped that it was him…  
    Alexei stands there and thinks that it’s not fair to have his heart broken before he even gets to properly fall in love. Three years later he signs his NHL contract. He’d told his agent that he’d sign for whoever paid the most, except the Aces. He would rather stay in Russia than play for them. He touches the words on his arm and hopes that he will be so busy playing he will forget. He knows he won't.

    Kent Person is twenty six when he plays against the two people in the world who he least wants to be in the same state as, let alone across the ice from. He knew it was coming. After Jack made it clear that he still wants nothing to do with him. After they had thrown their best insults and he had stormed out of the Jack’s room only to trip over some tiny blond boy who looked at Jack the way he used to. After the boy had all but hissed at him and it didn’t take a genius to figure out whose words were tattooed on the little pie maker (although to be fair he wasn’t sure that /Jack/ had put together the pieces yet, and wasn’t that just typical.)  
Jack and Alexie - the boy he loved and the one he turned down before he could love - on the ice against him. Is it any wonder that Kent is a bit aggressive?  
He had skated against Alexie before and they had always simply ignored each other (and if that resolute refusal of acknowledgement hurt worse than any check he’d ever taken, well only Kit needed to know that.)  
    This time there was no ignoring each other. Kent Parson might have lost everything he’s ever touched but he’ll be damned if he loses this game. So he skates hard. So, when he sees an opportunity he takes it. So when he’s being cursed at in Russian and dangling like a rag doll (and _dang_ when did Alexie get big to go with the tall?) he just takes the point and the extra two seconds and plays for all he’s worth.  
     They win.  
     After the game he makes his excuses to the team (“Headache, funny how getting shaken by a giant will do that to you” “Boo you’re getting old and soft Parse!” “Whatever man, see you tomorrow.”) and leaves as fast as he can. All he wants is to get to his hotel room and go to sleep, so of course he runs headlong into the person he wants to see least. At least this time he doesn't fall on his ass.

    It’s been nearly ten years since Kent Parson left him standing alone in a hallway in a hockey rink with a broken heart. Sometimes it feels like it was a lifetime ago. Right now it feels like it was barely minutes.  
Alexie’s thought a lot about what he would want to say to Parson over the years. At first he thought about winning him over; professing his love and somehow it all working out like in a fairytale.  
     Then he thought about yelling. All the horrible, mean, spiteful, things he could say to make his soulmate hurt as much as he did. Even at his angriest he never thought about hitting Kent though. Sure he was rough on the ice, but hockey was hockey and even then he couldn't bring himself to actually hurt the other man (and why did Kent have to be all muscles and swagger even when he was playing dirty and messing with Alexie’s goalie? It was simple unfair.)  
     Eventually he grew up enough to understand a little more, to be less angry. It still hurt but he could see how frightening it would be to love one person and then suddenly have someone else thrust at you. He could understand wanting to run. Sometimes, he realized, that’s just how love works. It didn’t make you a bad person, it just made you human. So, ten years later, when Kent plows into him then jumps back, looking like he expects a punch, Alexei only has one question left to ask.  
    “Why you never call after ended with Zamboni?”  
     It took awhile but he eventually he had pieced together enough to have a pretty good picture of what happened. The rumors about Parse and Zimmerman back when they were kids. The overdose that happened not long after he had first met Kent. The look on Jack’s face when he smiled at his phone and then stammered something about his “girlfriend.” Jack was a good person but whatever happened between him and Kent had clearly hurt them both deeply. Jack had moved on (Alexie’s money was on the little pie baker who was somehow always around) but still Kent had not so much as looked at him when they played the same ice (and he might look big and tough but /damm/ did it still hurt every time they had skated against each other and Kent refuse to even look at him.)  
    Kent who was staring at him in openmouthed shock, looking somewhere between outraged and terrified. He reaches out a hand and touches Kent’s shoulder, he wants to be gentle, to make Kent trust him. The other man looks like he is going to lean into the contact then pulls back with an angry snort.  
    “Figures he’d say something. Figures.” He takes another step back, squaring off like for a fight. “And say what Mashkov? Well? What did you hope to hear? Sorry I dumped you man but the guy I loved, the guy I thought loved me, won’t even speak to me now. So, like want to give it a go?”  
    His face is twisted up with anger and pain and Alexie really, really, wants to gather him up in a hug until he never looks that destroyed again.  “I’m well aware that I’m a selfish bastard” he continues, “but even I’m not that low!”  
    Alexie wants to tell him that he’s not any of those things, that he’s wonderful and perfect and he’s his soulmate! But with blinding clarity he also realizes that he doesn't know that. He met someone years ago and though that because of some words on their skin they would fall in love and be together forever. He really thought that it would be that easy. He didn’t know who Kent Parson was back then and he realizes that the boy he wanted so desperately a decade ago is long gone.  
    But then he also realises, with equal clarity, just how much he wants to know the man he’s standing in front of today.  
    “Could call, could talk. Be friends.” Takes a deep breath, “Or I could call. I should have call. Not fair to you. Maybe we try again?”  Kent looks at him like he’s grown a second head. Alexie reaches a hand out, “We take slow. Be friends first. Maybe just friends always. Not bad either. Ok?”  
     Slowly Kent nods, takes a shaky breath, “Friends and we take it slow? I can do that I guess. Ok.”

    They do take it slow. Texting after games or calling and chatting about practice and Kit. They find a rhythm, a back and forth that works. It’s almost six months before they kiss, the Falcons had just won a game and Kent had used a rare free weekend to come down and visit.  
    After the game, they had gotten dinner together - just burgers picked up to go and taken to Alexi’s place but it was easy and fun and natural. Just like it felt natural when Alexei chirped Kent for almost dropping to food, just like it felt natural when Kent crowded him against the wall and he forgot how to breath. They fit together well - just like Alexei had always dreamed he and his soulmate would.  
     They take it slow for another year and a half until they decide to take it very, very, fast and Alexei flies to Vegas and they get married by Elvis in a wedding chapel (“I can’t do a big wedding, Lexie, I can’t.” Kent had been near tears. “With my mom and the press, and everything, it’s not that I don’t love you I just can’t face it all.” He understood, they were marrying for each other not for anyone else.)  
    Jack and the bitty baker had come out and announced their engagement a few months before but it was still quite the story when the press first noticed the matching gold bands on their fingers. When Alexei watched the news coverage of Kent in Las Vegas he almost cried with happiness. There was his husband sitting there wearing the ring he had put on his finger not three days before. Both their teams had wanted to them to make a formal announcement but they wouldn’t budge. “We’re not going to treat this like a big deal because it’s not. The press can just get over it.”  
    So after a solid win for the Aces Kent had sat with several other teammates and answered questions until someone shouts out, “Is that a wedding ring?” and Swoops about dies laughing, actually going red in the face trying to keep quiet. (There had been a betting pool on how long it would take for someone to notice.)  
They had told their teams about the relationship months ago. There hadn't been any serious issues. A few people had said something (or not said something, and sometimes that was almost as bad) but in the end both their teams had their backs. Kent was still the Ace’s beloved captain, even if they now teased him about getting “old and tied down.” Alexei was still the Russian giant that had the back of every man on the ice. Mostly the guys were just disappointed that they had been cheated out of throwing their respective friends a bachelor's party.  
    At the question Kent had smiled and waved his hand so the ring glinted for the cameras. “Yes it is, last week I married my best friend and soulmate, Alexei Mashkov. Now, about the third quarter power play...” Of course there were a lot more questions after that but mostly things calmed down pretty fast.  
    The next day the Falcons lost their game and when the team went to press most of the questions were, predictably, still about his matching ring. He answered like he always did, honestly and with good humor but making himself out to speak just a little less English than he actually did (it really did make everything easier.)  
Later that week he flies to Las Vegas between games. They go out to eat and he’s fairly sure that there will be photos of them tomorrow morning. (Nothing scandalous just them holding hands, a quick kiss as they walk home - but there will be no hiding the love in either of their eyes. He’s glad, he never wants to hide how he feels about Kent ever again.)  
    He kisses his husband and winds their fingers together again as they lay next to each other in bed. It won’t be easy, playing for two different teams, living at different ends of the country, both of them dealing with complicated pasts and fears for the future, but they were here. They had matching gold bands as testament to their commitment and somehow, come what may, they would make it work.

 

Epilogue:  
     Kent Parson was seventeen when he met his soulmate and they exchanged their words. He thought that love was something that burned brighter than the sun. That it tore you up inside and made you scared to close your eyes for fear of losing the other person. He thought that if you just held on hard enough it could never die.  
    He was eighteen when he walked into a hotel room and watched the love of his life slip through his fingers. Sat in a hospital room until his sister came and pulled him away because he was going first in the draft tonight and he had to get ready. Wondered how you live when everything you touch turns to ash.  
    He was twenty six when he looked at his soulmate and for the first time saw, not the thief who stole his future, but just a man. A man who was asking if they could be friends.  
    He was twenty eight when he kissed that man and put a ring on his finger. Kent didn’t think love was like that sun anymore. He thought that it was more like the ocean. Big and strong, and sometimes scary but also comforting. He didn’t need to hold on with a death grip because it was always there, patiently waiting for him to come on his own terms.  
    When he was thirty nine he found himself wrestling two dogs, one cat, three children, and a husband (who was more trouble that the rest combined) out of the living room because someone needed to put up the Christmas tree and apparently _everyone else_ was more interested in trying to guess what was in the presents than helping.  
    Listening to the giggles and crashes coming from the kitchen he thought that maybe love was more like the stars. Not a single burning sun, but the whole spinning galaxy. Always there, never stationary but still a constant; pinpoints of light that guide the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm not actually 100% sure how old Kent is and if the ages line up with the cannon timeline but I think it's close enough. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
